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arXiv:2204.03781cs.CR

Color My World: Deterministic Tagging for Memory Safety

Hans Liljestrand, Carlos Chinea, Rémi Denis-Courmont, Jan-Erik Ekberg, N. Asokan

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Abstract

Hardware-assisted memory protection features are increasingly being deployed in COTS processors. ARMv8.5 Memory Tagging Extensions (MTE) is a recent example, which has been used to provide probabilistic checks for memory safety. This use of MTE is not secure against the standard adversary with arbitrary read/write access to memory. Consequently MTE is used as a software development tool. In this paper we present the first design for deterministic memory protection using MTE that can resist the standard adversary, and hence is suitable for post-deployment memory safety. We describe our compiler extensions for LLVM Clang implementing static analysis and subsequent MTE instrumentation. Via a comprehensive evaluation we show that our scheme is effective.

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cs.CRCryptography and Security

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  1. Windows ARM64 Internals: Deconstructing Pointer Authentication 1 comment

    • "The need for memory safety standards" (2025-02) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43189934 : > Technologies like ARM's Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) and the Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions (CHERI) architecture offer a complementary defense, particularly for…

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